The Malaysian Election Commission has just issued a staggering list
of seven countries which they say have taken up its offer
to come and monitor the up-coming elections to ensure they are free and fair –
and free from fraud.
The list includes three of the
world’s most authoritarian regimes; two countries described as ‘Hybrid’
(part-authoritarian) by The Economist Democracy Index and
two ‘Flawed Democracies’ under the same index. One of the countries has just
come out of a state of emergency following a blatant coup against the rule of
law and is not even rated on the index.
Malaysians will be left
wondering if this is an idea of a bad joke on the part of Najib and his
flunkies at the EC or whether he has set out to humiliate his own country in a
misguided attempt to rebuff the apparent insult by Britain, Europe and
Australia, who have expressed concerns about the conduct of GE14?
As every Malaysian knows, Prime
Minister Najib Razak has described Malaysia as a ‘perfect’ democracy and has in
the past resisted the idea that the country should be insulted by the
imposition of external election monitors, a measure urged by NGOs and the opposition.
Despite numerous reports and
judicial complaints about bribery, coercion and blatant cheating at previous
elections Najib stated in
January, for example, that”the chances of cheating are non-existent”.
Over the weekend his Foreign Minister retorted to the UK’s
suggestion of election monitors by thundering:
Malaysian democracy is to
be monitored by the Malaysian electorate, and the Malaysian electorate alone.
To assume that anyone else has the right, ability and competence is an insult
to each and every Malaysian voter. [Anifah Aman]
In fact, Malaysia is rated as a
far from perfect democracy in the international independant rankings, and all
denizens will know why. It comes 59th on the list of 168 countries in The
Economist’s list, just above Mongolia, and it is placed in the category of a
‘Flawed Democracy”.
The message is therefore clear.
If Malaysia was willing to bring standards of better practice to the
monitoring of GE14, there are 58 countries above it in the rankings to which
the Election Commission could turn for support.
These include 19 countries from
around the world, which are described as ‘Full Democracies’ in the rankings.
However, instead, Najib and his Election Commission cronies have, in this
semi-Uturn, resorted to some of the world’s most repressive governments to
profer their monitoring support.
These include authoritarian
regimes, whose expertise lies more in the stage management of pretend
elections, rather than the holding of genuine elections. Is that the sort
of advice and supervision that Najib is actually looking for?
If so, Malaysians have even more
reason to be worried about the conduct of GE14 than before.
Malaysia’s
Chosen ‘Democracy’ Oberservers So Far
So, let’s look at the list of countries that the Election Commission has
invited to observe GE14, according to today’s reports.
Firstly, you have Azerbaijan and
Cambodia, which come 148 and 124 out of the 168 countries on the Democracy
Index respectively and are described as Authoritarian Regimes.
Next, you have Thailand, which
suffered an army coup in 2014 and remains under martial law. The army
have been signalling they will hold elections again at some point, but they
have kept arbitrarily delaying that date – a planned election last year has been
postponed till this year, with no guarantees.
On that basis the country comes
107 on the index and is described as a ‘Hybrid Regime’.
The other Hybrid Regime is
Kyrgyzstan. This deserves some plaudits for being the only country in
post-Soviet Central Asia that has achieved any form of democracy, but this is
by virtue of having held its first ever peaceful transfer of power involving
elections (if suspect) just last year. Good on Kyrgyzstan, but has it got
guidance on democracy to support Malaysia?
We then have two so-called
‘Flawed Democracies’, including nearby Indonesia, which these days looks
near to beating Malaysia on the Democracy Index (it was a much reversed
situation a decade or so ago), standing at number 68.
Following that, an relatively
impressively placed, if tiny, Timor Leste, which has put to one side former
years of dreadful fighting and repression to stand at number 43 on the list,
well above Malaysia.
What tips Najib and the Election
Commission may be hoping to gain from the emissaries of these countries; how
many observers each will send or how these folk will be deployed and managed
remains a mystery. One thing is certain there isn’t much time to organise
them.
However, it is perhaps the final
country on the list that is most baffling, but perhaps most telling.
The Maldives have been in a
State of Emergency since the start of the year as, beset by corruption
allegations, President Abdulla Yameen pitched himself into an outright
confrontation with his own justice system and Supreme Court.
January 29, 2018 the Supreme Court
received a petition from the opposition alliance in the Maldives to temporarily
remove President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom and appoint investigators to look
into allegations of corruption and misrule.
Following on from this, on
February 1st, the Court ruled that the trial against the former President
Nasheed, which began in 2012, was unconstitutional and also ordered the release
of nine opposition MPs, resulting in an opposition majority in the Maldives.
Nasheed responded with a 45 day
State of
Emergency in February (that was then extended for another
30 days) and not only that, he ordered the arrest of two Supreme
Court judges, including the Chief Justice, as heavily armed troops stormed
the country’s top court.
He also arrested his
half-brother the former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
According to Amnesty
International Yameen has also outlawed peaceful protests, and has been
imprisoning people solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression
and peaceful assembly.“While some protestors have since been released, many
of those arrested during the state of emergency remain under detention.” [Amnesty]
Why, one wonders, did Najib’s
Election Commission think it was appropriate to ring up the Government of
President Yameen, under such circumstances, to ask if he could help with
supplying observers for the upcoming election?
After all, Yameen must be pretty
preoccupied.
